this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 115 points 6 months ago (3 children)

He touches on my major issue with all these companies, data mining without compensating the people that created that data. I have to pay for the operating system, get served ads, AND you get to make extra money off my information too? This kind of shenanigans would be tolerable with a free OS, or maybe one that compensated you like brave browser. The blatant fleecing of the consumer here is sickening. I’m glad data mining your screenshots is the last straw for people.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I've been screaming about this since I found out Re:CAPTCHA was using us to train AI. We should definitely be compensated.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Let me be the Devil's advocate here.

You/we (as users) are being compensated by being permitted onto whatever service is being gatekept by Recaptcha. We profit further by having that service not be completely tainted by bots. Sure, recaptcha ain't even close to perfect and can be easily bypassed, but any barrier of entry is better than none at all.

Google profits by getting free training for their models.

And the service provider profits by saving on bandwidth, moderation etc., which in turn benefits the users too in the form of a less degraded service.

There are many things to dislike about Google and what they are doing to the web. Recaptcha should not even be in your top 100.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (11 children)

Too bad he didn't touch the real issue with Linux for most people: lack of their industry favorite proprietary software.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (7 children)

If Linux suddenly started gaining traction on a bigger scale, Microsoft would make a user-facing proprietary distro and those bastards would still flock to it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

I'm not ok with data mining under literally any circumstances. There are some things which just shouldn't be done.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 6 months ago (17 children)

God i wish. And most everyone here could install a new operating system in about 20 minutes. But nobody else is going to because the learning curve for a regular user to install an os is basically perpendicular. Even if they had a linux installer already on a flash drive.

Oh just boot into the bios and find the option to boot for a flash drive and then boom installed.

Which requires a user to know, What a bios is

What booting means

What boot options mean

What the model of their flash drive is

What button on their keyboard they need to press to get to the bios

What secure boot is

Where they need to go to turn off secure boot

How and where to back up their important files

What a disk partition is

How to reverse the changes made to the bios so that it doesn't boot to usb by default.

And that's assuming they know why they want a different OS, why they care and that they know about Linux in the first place.

Most people dont and never will. All you can do is install Linux for the ones you like the most and say a prayer to your favorite deity for the rest.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It's worth noting that the same applies when installing Windows.

Most people never do that either because it's already ~~bloated with malware~~ installed on the PC they buy.

Same with macOS, you buy the hardware with preinstalled software.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Absolutely. If Linux was pre installed that's what people would use. Its the switching to Linux from something else that proves so complicated.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (2 children)

That is why Microsoft spent a total of gazillion dollars to have its OS pre-installed on all PCs. We need more PCs with Linux pre-installed. This should be an antitrust issue but I am not knowledgeable enough to say how.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Linux pre installed is the only way for most people to use it I'm afraid.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Agreed. All those things in your list are the hardest part of modern linux, if someone gets past the UEFI, BIOS secureboot hurdle the modern GUI experiemce is superior to Windows

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Most ppl can't be bothered to install an ad blocker. Microsoft knows ppl will just take whatever they offer.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Who needs to know their flash drive model?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yes.

Really the hardest part of desktop linux for a regular, so called "internet user", in the installation.

They don't have no clue how to install an operating system, even windows.

I once installed CentOS workstation for my father on his ThinkPad. Firefox and Libreoffice is all he needs. Automatic updates in the background make sure all the latest security patches are applied. There have been few time when, after the update, the laptop hangs at boot. I've since told him to choose the second-to-last boot option from the "start-up menu" until the fix for the bug has been deployed (usually in within a 24h).

So really using Linux isn't the hard part. Back in 2004 (ish) I went the painful route of installing my first Linux - Gentoo. But boy I learned a lot from it. Yes, I had a helping friend to get me over the hardest parts.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I spent too much time with corpo brain rot to give linux a chance on desktop and realize it's how I'd always imagined proper computing would be. It changed my outlook on the world when I finally did and it's liberating (much libre. Very wow). Glad to see more and more people catching on to the possibility of a better future.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

it really is crazy how different it feels to use a linux pc after being conditioned to think that windows is just how using a computer is. the way i relate it to my friends is that using windows feels like i'm constantly compromising with the computer, but using linux i own my computer and it works for me - not the other way around.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I've been 100% on Linux since July of last year. I thought I was currently having my first major Linux fucked up situation that I just could not figure out this weekend.

It has been very depressing, after trying to convince friends and family to give Linux a chance and keep an open mind for months, I was beginning to feel like a fraud and a liar.

But, after hours of software troubleshooting turning up nothing I've discovered I'm in the early stages of a dying ssd... My first major problem, and it's hardware related. It sucks but it is also a relief in a weird way.

And I'm finding out about it way earlier than I likely would have in windows thanks to btrfs. But it's also funny because if I had been having similar issues in windows I probably would have ran hardware diag much sooner, but because I'm still a bit of a Linux newbie I assumed I broke my OS and wasted hours troubleshooting software.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (3 children)

If you're running btrfs, you can send live snapshots to another btrfs volume on another drive, or use Timeshift which will do it for you amd keep track of expiring old copies. Clonezilla is OK for when you are able to take the system down entirely.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

It’s always a good idea to take regular images if you have the capacity for it. Clonezilla is what I like to use since it’s free and has good support

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago

It is satisfying to see stuff like this. Thank you for sharing.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago

The best advertiser for Linux is Microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (15 children)

I was about to post this video, lmao. But this man still thinks Linux is difficult and not easy to use. When in fact its become way easier than running Windows ~~Linux~~. Linux has surpassed Windows and Mac on the Desktop usability in the last 2 years. And it just keeps getting better.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (2 children)

But this man still thinks Linux is difficult and not easy to use

He explicitly said that it was incredibly easy to get set up on old hardware and that everything he did just worked.

All of his reasons why Linux is hard to use he specifically framed in the context of "historically speaking Linux was bad but now Linux is good"

Were you even paying attention?

That said, if you've ever tried to pair a controller with Linux that isn't a PS5 or Xbox controller it will be rough. Had to use the CLI to change Bluetooth configs and install non standard drivers to support it on Mint

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Linux is easier than Linux ?

[–] tophneal 16 points 6 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I've come to realize the Linux basics are actually a lot easier to learn compared to Windows and MacOS, the hard part is un-learning the old ways and habits of doing things. Like if one day everyone on earth forgot how to use operating systems, I'd bet Linux would probably be the one that catches on. It's only because we're so used to the idiosyncrasies of stuff like Windows that it feels more natural.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (4 children)

there are 400 bajilion how tos on how to install Linux. If you aren't going to do it then you arent going to do it, enjoy your corporate mandated spyware. I think it was Ben Frankin who said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little new user ease of use, deserve neither Liberty nor ease of use” or something like that

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (5 children)

I've tried to install Arch on my spare Dell laptop a week or two ago, and failed spectacularly twice in quick succession. I was using the arch wiki, assisted by GPT4 on things that were not clear to me. Just kept running into issue after issue after issue until five hours later I gave up.

I'll try again when I have the time.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Arch should never be anyone's first distro.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Most people start off with something a bit easier - Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu. There's no reason to jump straight into Arch.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (8 children)

Mention is made of Resolve, which does work great as a professional grade video editor, and in the next breath codec issues are raised, which are not a Linux issue but proprietary licensing issue.

For a simple workaround in Mint go to: /home/UserName/.local/share/nemo/scripts

Create 2 files to convert videos from the right click menu and make them executable in the Permissions:

#!/bin/bash

for file; do ffmpeg -i "$file" -c:v dnxhd -profile:v dnxhr_hq -pix_fmt yuv422p -c:a pcm_s16le -f mov "${file%.*}".mov

done

And:

#!/bin/bash

for file; do ffmpeg -i "$file" "${file}".mp4

done

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I've always been familiar with Linux and tech but always used windows cause gaming. Last week I stripped all my drives and set up dual boot to daily drive Linux with a windows fallback for whatever I might need windows for.

Fedora was up and running in no time.

Win 11, I had to jump through the hoops to avoid logging in, it doesn't label your drives like Linux does so you have to guess or cross reference somehow, twice as many reboots, pages of data settings.

So glad to finally be going Linux ❤️

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (6 children)

While I agree with this video. As someone who did migrate from Windows to Linux, I feel the biggest issue which wasn't address here was the planning for migrating to Linux.

Migrating to Linux means loosing access to Windows native applications like Adobe and ~~kernel level anti cheat~~ online games. What I found helped the most was transitioning to cross platform application and learning their ins and outs in Windows, or discovering ways to validate which applications work well in Proton and Wine.

With games ProtonDB is your best bet to see if there are issues. Or finding ways to solve issues.

With Professional software... you're not going to be as lucky, so transitioning to an alternative which works for you might be the best solution.

The best way to check if Linux will work for you is to run Linux in a VM or on an external SSD on your actual hardware. The best way to check if something works for you is to try it yourself.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You can still play online games. Not all of them, but more than not.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (9 children)

I think there are two major hurdles keeping Linux adoption back (besides the obvious installation bit). The first is that our backwards compatibility is terrible. It is easier to get old versions of Windows software to run in Wine than it is to get some old Linux software to run natively.

If something like Photoshop did finally release a Linux version, even if they only did one release to make 2% of people happy, it likely wouldn't be able to run natively after 5 years.

The second is a good graphical toolkit. Yes, GTK and Qt exist, but neither are as simple as WinForms or SwiftUI/Aqua.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I've got plenty of old software here under Linux that still runs fine to this day across a number of PC's and even a Raspberry Pi that I use as a backup desktop. I honestly can't see backwards compatibility being any more of an issue than it is under Windows - There's a number of accounting packages released under Windows 7 that won't run under Windows 10, the latest version of most popular browsers won't run under Windows 7. Likewise, the latest version of MS Office 365 won't run under Windows 8.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago

Manual installation is one thing, but by far the biggest reason is OEM preinstalls. 98% of the people never install any operating system themselves, the devices just come with one and that's the one that'll be used.

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